Bono Addresses U2's iTunes Album Controversy in New Memoir: 'I Take Full Responsibility'

In the excerpt published by The Guardian, Bono cited his “vaunting ambition” as the reason why he approached Apple CEO Tim Cook with the idea.

Bono recalled a meeting in 2014 with Tim, U2 manager Guy Oseary, and Apple executives Eddy Cue and Phil Schiller at the Apple headquarters to discuss the matter.

“Are you talking about free music?” Bono remembers Tim asking him at the time. “You want to give this music away free? But the whole point of what we’re trying to do at Apple is to not give away music free. The point is to make sure musicians get paid.”

“‘No,’ I said, ‘I don’t think we give it away free. I think you pay us for it and then you give it away free, as a gift to people. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?’” Bono continues.

Bono goes on to explain that Tim had some skepticism regarding the idea, but he was able to persuade the company to kick off Apple’s music subscription platform with the album.

“Tim Cook raised an eyebrow. ‘You mean we pay for the album and then just distribute it?’ I said, ‘Yeah, like when Netflix buys the movie and gives it away to subscribers.’ Tim looked at me as if I was explaining the alphabet to an English professor. ‘But we’re not a subscription organization,’” Bono writes. “‘Not yet,’ I said. ‘Let ours be the first.’ Tim was not convinced. ‘There’s something not right about giving your art away for free,’ he said. ‘And this is just to people who like U2?’”

“‘Well,’ I replied, ‘I think we should give it away to everybody,’” Bono continues. “It’s their choice whether they want to listen to it.’”

Bono‘s plan caused a huge controversy with many iTunes users being upset that the album just appeared on their accounts with no explanation.

“As one social media wisecracker put it, ‘Woke up this morning to find Bono in my kitchen, drinking my coffee, wearing my dressing gown, reading my paper.’ Or, less kind, ‘The free U2 album is overpriced.’ Mea Culpa,” Bono writes of the reaction at the time. “If just getting our music to people who like our music was the idea, that was a good idea. But if the idea was getting our music to people who might not have had a remote interest in our music, maybe there might be some pushback. At first I thought this was just an internet squall, but quickly realized we’d bumped into a serious discussion about big tech.”

He continues, “I take full responsibility. Not Guy O, not Edge, not Adam, not Larry, not Tim Cook, not Eddy Cue. I’d thought if we could just put our music within reach of people, they might choose to reach out toward it. Not quite.”

Bono‘s memoir, Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story, will be released on November 1.